parasitoid.

An organism whose development depends on a host that it eventually kills, especially in certain insect life cycles.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• parasitoid wasp
• parasitoid larva

On the page

The larva was a parasitoid developing inside the caterpillar.

The story’s creature behaved like a parasitoid rather than a harmless symbiont.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror. Forms: Singular parasitoid; plural parasitoids. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.